


We Will Remember Them

by Higgles123



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgles123/pseuds/Higgles123
Summary: My first attempt at writing Farrier :)
Relationships: Farrier (Dunkirk)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	We Will Remember Them

It was her. She was the thing that kept him alive when he was sure he was going to die. When his engine failed and his plane began its inevitable descent, he thought of her. When he stood on the beach watching his plane being engulfed in the flames he had ignited, he thought of her. When they dragged him away, interrogated him, beat him, through it all he thought of her. 

  
_Aurelia was tired; they both were but he couldn’t bare to waste a second of their time together sleeping. Instead his hands and his mouth traced every inch of her body, memorising the feel of her soft porcelain skin and the breathy gasps she made underneath him. He was savouring her, attempting to fill himself up with her so that her essence would sustain him for the months to come. Neither of them voiced their concerns that there would never be another time; that they would never be together again. Instead their lips lingered together a little longer than usual and their bodies stayed joined long after they had reached their release._

_  
_ _“Just one more,” Farrier murmured against her neck, puffing hot breath into her ear._

_  
_ _“I can’t,” Aurelia shook her head, her blonde hair fanned out across the pillow, curling slightly with the glittering/‘ perspiration that gathered on her neck and forehead._

_  
_ _“You can,” he breathed against her as he moved inside of her with an agonising slowness and his thumb toyed with her overly sensitive and stimulated nub._

_  
_ _He lifted his head when he felt her thighs begin to quiver because he wanted to see her come undone again, so he could pocket the memory and reach for it in his darkest hours. As soon as he felt her walls clenching around him, he couldn’t hold on any longer._

_  
_ _“Don’t cry, darling,” he kissed away the salty tears that ran down her face._

_  
_ _“I don’t want you to go,” she sobbed quietly._

_  
_ _“I don’t want to go either,” he cupped her face, looking down into her eyes intently. His hand skated across her stomach, still flat, not yet showing the baby that they had created together. “I don’t want to leave either of you, my love, but I want our child to be born into a country that is free. I would fight to the death for that.”_

_Which is exactly what she was afraid of._

_  
_ _“They fly over the house sometimes in formation on their way out to the channel,” Aurelia mumbled. “They fly over and for a moment I feel like a child, so excited to see these great majestic metal birds flying high in the sky; looking so free. And then I remember where they’re going and what they’re doing; who they’re fighting. When they come back I always count them just to see how many of them haven’t returned. And then it hits me that for all I know it could be you up there, flying over our house to fight the enemy in the sky. It could be you who doesn’t return.”_

_  
_ _“Ssh,” he pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Ssh come on. I’ll always return. I promise.”_

After they’d done interrogating him, trying to prise every little bit of information from him that they could, they took him away. It was naive of him to believe that the Geneva Convention would afford him any protection as a prisoner of war, but he soon came to relish the stale bread and watery gruel he ate once a day as well as the dark and damp cell that became his home.

_Aurelia was in the garden when it came. The weather was warm and as she tended to her lavender plants, humming Vera Lynn and thinking of nothing much. But as the young boy on his bike came to a halt, his brakes squeaking, she couldn’t help but think of the happily shining sun as a cruel trick because she knew her life was about to turn dark. There was a reason they called the children who delivered telegrams angels of death. And she wished that this angel had never come._

_Prisoner of war._

_Those three words haunted her every waking and sleeping thought. He was alive and she knew for that she should be grateful; for that she should hold onto hope, but she couldn’t. All she could think about was how they might break him, not just in body but in soul. She tried to hold onto the hope that he would come back to her… but what if only a shell came back? She placed a hand to her stomach; the slight swell of the life that grew in her, so many what ifs running through her head. If God didn’t allow him to come back for her then she prayed he would allow it for their child. Please._

The days were long; the weeks and months even longer. Sleep. Eat. Work. Sleep. Eat. Work. Many men tried to escape; some succeeded but most didn’t. He understand it; their need to return home but for Farrier the risk was not worth it. He would rather wait years to see her and feel her once more than lose his life on a whim. And his child; a boy, a girl? He didn’t know. Where they fair like her or darker like him? Did they have his full lips; her expressive eyes? He didn’t know. But one day soon he would.

_The midwife placed the small boy in Aurelia’s arms and all she could see was_ him. _The emotions inside her were elation and heartbreak all at once and she couldn’t control the tears that fell. His hair was sandy brown like his father’s and the lips that suckled at her breast were full and pouty. Her heart ached and even though her newborn would distract her from it, he still couldn’t take away the pain inside of her._

Farrier closed his eyes as he breathed in the scent of lavender planted neatly across the fields that the train sped past. Lavender at the front door was good luck, that was what Aurelia always said. He didn’t know about good luck but the sight of those purple flowers, blowing slightly in the gentle wind made him feel homesick for something he hadn’t even realised he missed. How he ached to walk those steps to the front door, flanked on either side by the lavender plants his wife tended to with such care and devotion. To know that in a matter of days he would be doing just that was everything that had kept him going these past years.

_“And your Daddy flew an airplane in the sky like a bird, flying high and flying free. And soon he will come back to us; not flying but still free.”_

_Aurelia smiled at her son; her Edward. His chubby cheeks were rosy with teeth that were coming through his gums and keeping him up crying all night. But now as she stood by the window with him on her hip, telling him stories of the father he had yet to meet, he was smiling at her as though he understood everything she said._

England felt different, Farrier decided as he stood upon his homeland for the first time in numerous years. The people looked the same on the outside, but inside he could see the affect that war had had on them. Strangers congratulated him on his safe arrival back home; they thanked him for what he had done for the country and he struggled with the urge to scowl and run what away. What _had_ he done exactly? Nothing. He had done nothing but keep himself alive.

_“When’s Daddy coming home?”_

_Aurelia sat on the end of Edward’s bed, reading him a bedtime story and she swallowed the lump in her throat when he asked the same question of her just as he did every night. Her poor son; for four years all he had ever known of his father was the photograph on his little bedside table and the stories she told him._

_“Will he be coming home now cos the war is gone?”_

_“I hope so, darling,” she nodded truthfully. “Even if it takes him a while, he’ll be back with us as soon as he possibly can.”_

_“And then I can show him my toys and play in the garden with him?” Edward’s eyes were full of excitement._

_“Yes,” she smiled._

_She kissed him goodnight and closed his bedroom door and when she climbed into her own bed that night, she didn’t feel the usual sadness envelope her when she looked at the sepia wedding photo on her nightstand._ Their _wedding photo. He was coming home. He truly was. He had survived and he would be on his way back to her, to their son. Perhaps his eyes wouldn’t look at her with the adoration they did on their wedding day, and perhaps the horrors of what he had seen and been through would make him unrecognisable but she realised she didn’t care. She just wanted him home._

Home. How many nights had he dreamed of standing at this very door? His finger traced one side of the door frame, a smile forming upon his lips as he remembered carrying Aurelia over this very threshold on their wedding night and banging her head. He lifted a hand to knock and then shook his head ruefully because what sort of person knocked on their own front door? A person who has been away so long that they almost feel like a stranger, perhaps?

A small giggling child came running from the direction of the back garden; his scabbed and scuffed knees visible just below the grey shorts he wore and Farrier’s breath was caught in his throat as he stared at his younger mirror image. She appeared next, her hands out ready to tickle the runaway child. Aurelia. She looked different yet somehow unchanged. Even just the way she stood told of the maternal aura that encompassed her now, and when she stepped towards him slowly, looking at him as though he was a ghost, Farrier found his own feet unable to move. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing and murmuring words that he couldn’t hear over the whooshing pounding in his ears. They kissed. They kissed for all of the days they had missed; they kissed for every birthday, anniversary, Christmas they had been separated. They kissed as though they were newly married again and they kissed as if they were two souls finally reconnected after centuries of separation. It was only once they pulled apart, their eyes saying all of the things to each other that they didn’t know how to form with words, that Farrier looked again upon the child.

“He came only a few months after they captured you,” Aurelia spoke, following his gaze and smiling when her own almond eyes fell upon the boy. “This is your son; Edward.”

Even if the child had not looked exactly as he did, Farrier would have known. There was something about the strange pull in his stomach and elated ache of his heart that told him this small human was his own flesh and blood.

“Mummy said you flied a big airplane in the sky?” Edward initiated the conversation with his father, seemingly unafraid of the stranger in his front garden. “Will you be going away again?”

“No,” Farrier shook his head, crouching down to his son’s height, trying to absorb every little detail he could. He had tried to imagine this moment over and over again but nothing could compare to the reality of it.

“I’m glad,” Edward smiled. “Do you want to come and see my toys now, Daddy?”

_Daddy._ Farrier clenched his jaw tightly as he threatened to break down in tears and wail like he had wanted to so many times over the years yet he had never allowed himself to. Why did he so want to now?

“Go inside, Eddie,” Aurelia told him. “We’ll follow you in, alright?”

Farrier’s eyes followed the direction of his son, long after his little footsteps had disappeared into the house. He blinked when he felt Aurelia’s hand in his, squeezing slightly and when he looked at her he wondered how it was possible to love two human beings so much; one of whom he had known for all of a few minutes.

“You’re home now,” she murmured, lifting his hand to her mouth.

_You’re home now and we will fix you; your son and I, your family,_ her eyes told him silently. It may take weeks, it may take years but we will fix you and we will love you. Our love will be your salvation.

He was home. And he was loved. Whatever else happened from now on, that was all he needed to know. He was home when so many others would never see their homes again.

_They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:_

_Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn._

_At the going down of the sun and in the morning_

_We will remember them._


End file.
